Author: staff

Berlusconi’s extraordinary endurance rested on his ability to survive electoral defeats, collapsed governments, criminal trials and repeated predictions of his political death. His wealth, television empire and a party constructed around himself gave him resources independent of his popularity at any particular moment. Meloni lacks those tycoon-style advantages, but she is still only 49 years old, tops the polls and is planning an electoral reform that could make it easier for her to keep her grip on power. Nearly four years after taking office, she towers over her coalition partners without an obvious challenger on the right. Italo Bocchino, a…

Published on 04/09/2026 – 9:21 GMT+2•Updated 9:39 Ukraine’s finance minister has warned that the country may have to cut non-military spending unless it can secure funding from its allies, as he urged European ministers to “think outside the box” as Kyiv faces another winter of Russian escalation. Sergii Marchenko, who has overseen the country’s finances since 2020, told Euronews Ukraine had not faced such a tight budget situation since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. With the focus on military spending and weapons procurement, other areas of the budget could be affected and disbursements delayed unless a solution…

Published on 04/09/2026 – 9:43 GMT+2 Voters in North Carolina in the United States began receiving their mail-in ballots on Friday, the first state to do so this election cycle. It comes as the Trump administration pushes the Supreme Court to revive an executive order that would sharply limit the practice. The administration filed an emergency request on Thursday asking the justices to lift a lower court’s block on the order — a request lodged just as ballots started going out, and roughly two months before the November midterms. North Carolina election officials say they’re pressing ahead regardless, with the…

Dan Jukes, Farage’s long-term media chief, and James Orr, his senior policy adviser, have stepped down as Reform UK launches investigation. Listen AI generated Text-to-speech

For much of the war, Russian drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv followed a particular rhythm; they almost always came at night. The warnings would begin on monitoring channels on Telegram in the late evening. They announced drones moving south, missiles being launched, air defences working. Ukrainian civilians judged whether it was prudent to stay indoors or make for shelter in the metro based on the severity of the threat. Now, Russia has changed tactics with the use of fast-flying, jet-powered drones and the expectation that daylight brings a return to normal life has been shattered. Since…

Published on 04/09/2026 – 8:38 GMT+2 Argentine President Javier Milei said on Thursday that “winds of change” were beginning to favour Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. In a TV address, the right-wing leader touted US President Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that Washington could reconsider its neutral position on the islands, which have been at the centre of a long running and bloody dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom. “President Trump recently stated that the United States is reevaluating its historical position regarding Las Malvinas,” Milei said, using the Argentine name for the islands. “This threat is not to…

Published on 04/09/2026 – 8:03 GMT+2 Volkswagen is about to shed one in seven of its workers. The German car giant said on Thursday that management and unions had agreed to cut a further 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, on top of 50,000 already planned, bringing total losses to 100,000. “It is essential to systematically align workforce levels with economic realities,” the 10-brand group said in a statement. The firm had approved a plan involving “the reduction of around 50,000 jobs” on top of another 50,000 already agreed, it added. Hit by US tariffs, patchy demand for…

“Sex seems so easy for so many people,” a young filmmaker tells her new lover, laying half-naked in a pool of discarded sweet wrappers. “But I’ve never been able to get there with someone else unless I’m really far away in my head.” This is one of many moments in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s delirious dissection of slasher movies, that captures its absurd yet intimate magic — but also one that serves as a core reminder for viewers: To reach this movie’s orgasmic plane, you too must learn to let go. The story begins with…

Billboards and election posters featuring election campaign ads for various parties are pictured in Magdeburg. | Ronny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images But the chancellor comes into the election in Saxony-Anhalt — and two more elections on Sept. 20 — in a precarious position. Already the least popular chancellor on record after 16 months in office, Merz’s fellow conservatives have been quietly debating what would be a remarkable scenario by German standards: replacing the chancellor — a so-called Kanzlertausch, or chancellor swap. “Given the dissatisfaction, the poll numbers and the fact that there are additional elections coming up next year … the…

Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right government will become the longest-lasting in Italy’s postwar history on Friday, a notable record that belies considerable challenges ahead of elections next year. In a country once a byword for political instability, Italy’s first woman leader will have been in charge of the same administration for 1,413 days, one more than the late Silvio Berlusconi managed during one of his four stints in office. “It is certainly a point of pride,” Marco Osnato, a prominent lawmaker with Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, told the AFP news agency of the milestone. The record is likely to…